International law firm relies on Mimecast to protect email users and keep client confidential material safe, blocking 48 attempts to access a spear-phishing website in just one month

Context

DAC Beachcroft is a leading international legal business providing a full service commercial, transactional, claims, risk and advisory capability for clients across the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and North America.

The firm’s 2,300 staff in 16 offices worldwide rely heavily on email for confidential client communication, so reliability and security are vital. IT Infrastructure Manager, Kieran Croucher, explained: “Email is probably the most important service we run as an IT team, so we’ve tried to build in as much redundancy and resilience as we can.”

A big part of that resilience comes from Mimecast Unified Email Management which was rolled out firm-wide in 2011 and quickly became a key support for Kieran and his team.

Multi-layered security

Overall, Kieran and his team are in no doubt that Mimecast has enhanced DAC Beachcroft’s email environment - creating efficiency and usability, while providing the peace of mind that comes with a multi-layered approach to security.

Even so, Kieran is well aware that a fast-moving threat landscape, and the potentially serious financial and reputational consequences of an email security breach, demand constant vigilance. Most recently this led him to seek out protection against targeted attacks.

“We’d experienced a couple of incidents, targeted attacks against our finance team, which had failed,” he explained. “That, coupled with the knowledge that these kinds of attacks are on the rise, led us to look for a solution to help us manage the risk.”

Beyond gateway security

Kieran had no hesitation in turning to Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection - URL Protect, which extends traditional gateway security to defend against malicious links in email through URL rewriting, web scanning and by blocking suspect sites – all in real time.

“There was no need to evaluate other solutions,” he said. “Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection offered all the features and functionality we were looking for, plus simple provisioning and a friction-free experience for users.”

DAC Beachcroft initially deployed the service to the IT department, then to a wider pilot group, before rolling out to the wider business in September 2015.

Peace of mind

Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection works well with DAC Beachcroft’s existing Mimecast services, as well as a third party web-filtering solution, according to Kieran: “I think users get peace of mind that they are better protected. Mimecast is another layer of security. It complements the control we already had and gives reassurance we are well protected against increasingly sophisticated threats.

“It also helps to educate users around the risks and their responsibilities. The fact that URLs in emails now point to Mimecast does make the whole issue of targeted threats more visible.”

The service has also eliminated a support overhead for Kieran’s team. Prior to installing, users would occasionally click on dubious links, and this would trigger a time-consuming forensic exercise – something that is now a thing of the past. “Typically, it would take a couple of people half a day to risk assess suspect links after the fact, but we haven’t had to do that once since we deployed Mimecast.”